5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

CHIEF

Yes, CHIEF was the Wordle answer on August 29, 2022 (Wordle #436).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CHIEF Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /t͡ʃiːf/

Noun

The leader or head of a tribe, organisation, business unit, or other group.

“All firefighters report to the fire chief.”

Noun

Headship, the status of being a chief or leader.

“Bob is our troubleshooter in chief.”

Adjective

Primary; principal.

“Negligence was the chief cause of the disaster.”

Adjective

Intimate, friendly.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: August 29, 2022 (#436).

See the full page for that puzzle: August 29, 2022 (#436).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How CHIEF performs as a guess

CHIEF is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 79.5% of games, misses completely in 20.5%, and leaves about 207 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,805 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

C___F C in the 1st position and F in the 5th position C__E_ C in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _H__F H in the 2nd position and F in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in CHIEF.

First-turn measures

All four describe CHIEF used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.57 Entropy (bits)
207 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHIEF performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,805 Rank among openers
Opening with CHIEF solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,805 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
892
4 guesses
1,197
5 guesses
197
6 guesses
12
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EI

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
35%
All gray
20%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S I L E N
C H I E F

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches CHIEF in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

CHIEF can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

486 answers
381 answers
187 answers
165 answers
96 answers
79 answers
66 answers
64 answers
56 answers
53 answers
53 answers
45 answers
41 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
28 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for CHIEF; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

C3H4I1E1F4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Try next

TALON SLART SOLAR SLANT SAURY ROANY

Strategy after playing CHIEF

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CHIEF.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHIEF:

20% chance
Suggested:
TALON
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

20.5% →
TALON 5.86 bits
16.0% →
SLART 5.72 bits
7.9% →
SOLAR 4.73 bits
7.0% →
SLANT 5.14 bits
4.0% →
SLANT 5.00 bits
3.3% →
SAURY 4.90 bits
2.8% →
ROANY 4.87 bits
2.7% →
SLANT 4.16 bits
2.4% →
SLART 4.93 bits
2.2% →
FLORA 4.69 bits

Research on CHIEF

Game-tree analysis and word research for CHIEF, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with CHIEF, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,897 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,779 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it CHEEF.

Rhymes with BRIEF GRIEF THIEF MOTIF SHEAF

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CHIEF is a kind of leader or supervisor.

Synonyms head main master primary boss principal

Opposites unimportant

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CHIEF sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 129 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 75 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.8 of 5).

In a sentence

The chief wants to see you.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The chief is speaking to me.
© tatoeba.org contributor bsc2015 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).